History

The addition of billiard rooms was a tactic adopted in the late 1800s by many libraries and clubs across Australia in the hope they would attract new subscribers without detracting from the original purpose of the institution. In their history of the Castlemaine Library, Annear & Ballinger note that the 1890 installation of a billiard table in the Castlemaine Mechanics’ Institute was considered a useful ploy by historian James Martin, who wrote:

They might think at first only of billiards, but from these they would be drawn to books, and thus to have healthful stimulants for body and mind.

So too the thoughts of the Maldon Athenaeum’s committee members turned towards a billiard room when funds and subscribers were at a very low ebb at the end of the 1890s. Aware that something had to change if the Athenaeum was to survive, various meeting were held and in January 1908, the Mount Alexander Mail newspaper reported:

At a well-attended meeting of the Athenaeum Committee on Tuesday evening the President (Mr F. Hodge) presiding, it was resolved to call for tenders for the erection of a room at the rear of the present institution, size 30 by 24 feet. … The room will be used for books, and no doubt a billiard table will be installed therein in a very short time.

Showing great speed, the new billiard room was opened in June of the same year, having cost £177 to build. Mr Lawn, the librarian, was appointed manager. Three weeks later, the Tarrengower Times reported that 30 new subscribers had enrolled and the table itself had turned a profit of £6/4/- in the previous fortnight.

The billiard room’s popularity continued to build with many tournaments organised between local and district teams. So successful was the venture that by February 1909, the Athenaeum was looking forward to being not only debt-free but profit-making:

… the long-talked of new room has been erected and a splendid billiard table installed in part of it. This has induced some past members to rejoin, besides which a large number of new ones have been registered. To procure the table your Committee borrowed £100, and since it was installed in June last £25 has been repaid. … by the next annual meeting the institution should be out of debt and the receipts from the table will available for the benefit of the Athenaeum generally.

Subscriber numbers also increased after the 1916 Early Closing Act forced the curtailing of billiard games in the many Maldon hotels, whose bars had to close at 6pm. The Maldon News of October 1916 reported that Mr Thomas Woodlock, Assistant Master at Maldon State School, had described the Athenaeum and billiard room as ‘a necessary institution for the young fellows of the town, as it provided facilities and entertainment with nothing objectionable about them.’

But this attitude began to change after 1918 when the Athenaeum offered honorary membership to all returned servicemen. Maldon historian Brian Rhule describes how some ex-servicemen who gathered socially in the billiard room ‘reputedly drank alcohol, swore profusely, and played billiard in a haze of tobacco smoke reminiscent of the battlefield they had managed to escape’.

This did not go down well with some Maldon residents. In July 1925, an unknown party tried to force closure of the billiard room by informing the Under Secretary for Lands that the Athenaeum was being used for commercial purposes ‘in breach of the Reservation’. This was successfully refuted by the Athenaeum committee. Five years later the committee considered instigating legal proceedings against a neighbour, Miss White, who for years had shown ‘resentment to the presence of the billiard room by hammering on its walls at regular intervals’.

On the evening of 30 July 30 1933, a fire broke out in the Athenaeum Hall, partly destroying the reading and library rooms. Six months later a second fire occurred, this time including the billiard room. The cause of the fires was unknown, but arson was suspected. The Committee, determined to waste no time, commenced public fundraising for the construction of a new library and billiard room.

Tensions escalated, coming to a head in April 1934 when thirteen outraged ratepayers living in the vicinity of the Athenaeum sent a petition to the Minister of Lands asking that the ‘billiard saloon’ at the rear of the Athenaeum be removed, on the grounds that it:

… is a public disgrace, as conducted for a long time past, certain frequenters using bad and filthy language, others being under the influence of liquor, and others well-known gamblers. … Men and youths, (many of them not ratepayers or members of the Athenaeum) [are] congregating there all hours of the day time, & often after 11pm at night.

The petitioners also objected to ‘the continual tramping of feet on boards around the tables’ that interfered with ‘the peace and quietude of the reading room’ and the ‘menace from conflagration’ as the building was near a private residence.

In a last desperate effort, the ‘Misses White of Maldon’ engaged a solicitor to request the committee to shift the location of the billiard room from its site next to their neighbouring property to the opposite side along the Post Office fence, offering to pay costs ‘with a limit of £40’. Undeterred, rebuilding on the original sites of both the main building and the billiard room went ahead: in July 1934 the foundation stone was laid by Mr J. J. Huish, Secretary; and in December 1934 the new Maldon Athenaeum was officially declared open.

With the advent of television in the 1950s the popularity and need for billiards waned. The billiard room was first leased to the Maldon Fire Brigade in 1958 and, from 1961, to the RSL. In April 2018 the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning formally handed over the building at the rear of the Library to the Maldon RSL sub-branch, which continues to meet in the former billiard room to this day. 

Eirwen Stevenson
on behalf of the Maldon Athenaeum Library,
2024

References

(All books are available at the library. Find them in our catalogue)

Annear, Robyn & Ballinger, Robyn (1996) There are not many votes in books: a history of the Castlemaine Library, 1855-1996. Friends of the Castlemaine Library, Castlemaine. Page 47.

Library minutes and correspondence held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only.

Rhule, Brian (2019) Maldon: a new history 1853−1928. Exploring History Australia, Bendigo,

On-line sources

National Library of Australia Digitised Newspapers − trove.nla.gov.au

Mount Alexander Mail, 16 January 1908, p.2

Mount Alexander Mail, 25 June 1908, p.4.

Tarrengower Times and Maldon Advertiser, 15 July 1908, p. 3

Tarrengower Times and Maldon Advertiser, 3 March 1909, p.3

Tarrengower Times and Maldon Advertiser, 13 February 1909, p.3.

Mount Alexander Mail, 1 March 1909, p.2.

Tarrengower Times and Maldon Advertiser, 23 February 1910, p.2.

The Maldon News, 3 October 1916, p.2.

The Maldon News, 16 March 1917, p3.

The Age (Melbourne), 2 August 1933, p.13.

The Age (Melbourne), 17 February 1934, P.21.

The Herald (Melbourne), 16 February 1934, p.4

The Maldon News, 25 December 1934, p3.